Water Our Most Essential Resource
Ambience: Stream
Of all the natural resources on our planet, which would say is the most essential? I’m Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.
Schoenholtz: Water is essential to all aspects of life. It’s the one resource that’s irreplaceable.
Stephen Schoenholtz is a professor in the Department of Forest resources and environmental conservation at Virginia Tech
Schoenholtz: If you look at most resources, there are always alternatives. Energy – there are alternatives. Agricultural products – if we run out of something, we can eat something else. But when it comes to water, we don’t have enough of it or it’s in bad condition, it’s irreplaceable. We can’t substitute for water. So among the planet’s resources. This is the one. We’re all depend on it. Every person does in many many different ways.
he earth is often referred to as the “water planet”. So there is water everywhere. There’s water frozen at the Poles. There’s water in the oceans. There’s freshwater. There’s water underground. So there’s lots of water. One of the limitations we face is that only 3% of it is available to we humans. The rest of it is either frozen in glaciers or in ice caps or in the oceans.
Water is a finite resource. We cannot make more water. We can modify water that we have, such as desalination – getting rid of the salt in water from the oceans — and very expensive, energy intensive. But we need water to live and so those expenses start to come into play. And countries are doing it and cities are doing it, even in the United States.
We’ll hear more about water in future programs. I’m Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.